During June, many Safer Cornwall partners and organisations will be promoting our ‘Say NO to Hate crime’ campaign. The following gives a breakdown of supporting events:

June is also Gypsy Roma Traveller history month. Staff from a variety of partners will be in the long Gallery in New County Hall Truro from the 2nd to the 5th June promoting history the month and the campaign.

On the 11th June The Safer Liskeard Group will be conducting another street walkabout with many partners including Cornwall Fire and Rescue Service. One of the areas being promoted will be the ‘Say NO to hate crime campaign’.

On Saturday the 14th June on the Piazza in Truro, LGBT PACT will be holding an information day. The campaign will be promoted along with providing other key information.

On the 18th June from 10.00 am to 12.30am, the St Day Gypsy and Traveller Women’s group are having an open day at Teyluva childrens centre, St Day. Displays of photographs, art work and films will be available, along with refreshments and a buffet lunch.

On June 20th, there will be a Senior Life skills event in St John’s Hall, Penzance. Victim support will be promoting the campaign along with other useful information for senior citizens.

TravellerSpace will be showing 3 films called ‘Travellers Tales’ in Redruth Cinema on 24th June between 10.30 and 12.00am.

The Safeguarding adults team will be also be including Hate crime literature in big mailshot to about 1000 organisations during the month.

Paula Wellings, Casualty Reduction Manager delivered a presentation at the International Safer Roads Conference in Cheltenham regarding making knowledge exchange between theory and practice a reality; a practical model to enhance road casualty reduction on a decreasing budget.

In the UK there is a statutory requirement on local government to aid road casualty reduction. While Cornwall Council was successful in reaching their 2010 casualty reduction targets, it had no evidence to suggest which initiatives contributed to this achievement and which did not.

Much of the research in traffic psychology is done without having any impact on practice, and much ‘best practice’ in road safety was based on intuition rather than evidence. Cornwall Council recognised that an evidence-based approach was required to meet future targets and ensure interventions were gaining the best possible return on investment.

There is a framework within the UK, for partnership between business and academia known as ‘Knowledge Transfer Partnership’ (KTP). The KTP is a government funded project that puts a recent graduate in the workplace with supervision from their employer and a University.

Cornwall Council used this mechanism to embed an evidence-based practice into road casualty reduction. The approach begins with case studies of priority risk groups. The research and collision data was critically appraised and an understanding of the implications for road safety interventions, in terms of relative need and effectiveness, was developed.

Change management groups were formed with road safety practitioners, engineers, and police, where recommendations from the research are embedded in practice; these take place regularly to ensure the continuation of the model developed during the KTP post’s period. The groups allow evidence to be communicated effectively from researcher to practitioner, allowing a sustainable, affordable mechanism for bridging the gap between theory and practice.

The European elections are almost upon us. Because of the heightened publicity around immigration associated with the campaign, it is possible that you, or someone you know may become subjected to comments or behaviour of a nature that constitute a hate incident or a hate crime. You can get more information on what constitutes a hate crime/incident here.

Safer Cornwall is an apolitical organisation and seeks to protect anyone in Cornwall from behaviour that is illegal.

Cornwall Council Trading Standards and HM Revenue & Customs have recently undertaken a number of joint operations aimed at tackling the sale of illegal tobacco in Cornwall. Seizures of counterfeit and illegally imported tobacco have been made and criminal investigation commenced. Illegal tobacco sales have been shown to attract other types of offending into a local community as well as encouraging children to take up smoking and adding to the 1,000 deaths a year in Cornwall due to smoking related disease. Any information concerning suspected illegal sales of tobacco or alcohol can be reported in confidence to Cornwall Council Trading Standards on 0300 1234 191 or via Crimestoppers.

UK Hoarding Awareness Week will run from 19 to 25 May 2014. The aim of the week is to raise awareness of hoarding facts; to promote greater understanding and acceptance across those who can influence change; and to encourage a stronger tendency for key influencers to support and promote at key moments. This year’s campaign will focus on increasing awareness of hoarding amongst the Fire and Rescue Community and strategic partners.

The key messages of UK Hoarding Awareness Week 2014 are:
• Hoarding can create significant risks to the individual, the community and firefighters
• Understanding the risks involved, as a significant step towards managing those risks

Safer Cornwall is working with a number of stakeholders to raise awareness of the issues surrounding hoarding.
Working together and sharing information during UK Hoarding Awareness Week will allow Safer Cornwall and partners to highlight the risks to the community, encourage greater partnership working to help those who demonstrate a tendency to hoard or clutter and to promote the sharing of good practice. Increasing understanding of the issues relating to hoarding, and to those individuals with a tendency to hoard, will help to make both the community and firefighters safer.
Find out more about UK Hoarding Awareness Week at http://www.cfoa.org.uk/HoardingAwarenessWeek2014

Officers from Cornwall Council and the Police have conducted a series of patrols over the last week, which were carried out in the town centre and on housing estates as part on the ongoing clamp down on noise and anti social behaviour.

Council officers from Community Safety , Anti Social Behaviour Team, Licensing and Environmental Health carried out joint patrols with the police on Monday12th, Thursday 15th and Friday16th from 7.30 pm till the early hours of the morning to conduct monitoring and compliance of licensed premises, any to take swift action as a result of any noisy parties or anti social behaviour that may be reported in the locality.

Whilst there were no real issues identified during the patrols, Cornwall Council and Police will be conducting additional patrols in the future.

Leaving expensive items such as mobile phones and sat navs on show can make a vehicle more attractive to thieves. Most vehicle crime is opportunist and it only takes seconds for a thief to empty your car of valuables.

Take care by keeping your vehicle locked and secure and by keeping all valuables out of sight.

Top tips for securing your vehicle
•Keep your vehicle locked at all times when it is unattended.
•Close all windows.
•Remove all valuables such as phones, sat navs and handbags.
•Park your vehicle in a safe and well lit area. Use secure car parks.
•Security mark your possessions.

The following items are of particular interest to the thief so should never be left in your vehicle:
•Satellite navigation systems
•MP3 systems
•Mobile phones
•Laptops
•Wallets/ purses/ credit and debit cards
•Cash/ cheque books
•Electrical items
•Jewellery
•Power tools and work equipment
•Vehicle registration documents
•Items of clothing, food or alcohol

The results of ‘Have your say’, the joint survey by Safer Cornwall and Devon and Cornwall Police which asks people to measure how safe they feel living in Cornwall and to identify the issues that concern them most, have been published.

1329 people responded to the survey with results indicating that

• outside in their local area during the day, 90% of people felt fairly or very safe, and only 4% felt fairly or very unsafe;
• after dark, 74% of people felt either fairly or very safe when outside in their local area. However, 10% felt fairly unsafe, and 3% felt very unsafe.
• 15% of people think that drunk and rowdy behaviour is a problem compared with 21% of people in the last survey.
• the main issues raised by the survey were speeding vehicles, , dog fouling, rubbish/litter and parking.
• 18% of people said there were no problems in their area.

People should be reassured that Cornwall is a safe place to live, where rates of crime recorded by the police are low when compared with similar areas elsewhere in the country. We know that younger people are most at risk from becoming a victim of crime, yet do not always recognise this risk. Contrasting with this, older people are often at a lower risk of becoming a victim of crime, and yet can feel more vulnerable than they actually are.

The survey has provided useful information to the various teams which are part of the Safer Cornwall partnership, and the wider service providers, to enable them to focus their work on what matters most to communities.

Cornwall Council Trading Standards, have recently taken part in a sampling programme where legal highs were purchased from a variety of outlets across the county and submitted, with assistance from Devon and Cornwall Police, for analysis to find out what exactly is inside them.

Results showed a wide variety of substances were contained, however many of these were not listed on the packaging, leaving Trading Standards concerned that customers do not truly know what they are taking. In addition to this, many of the products are sold as “research chemicals” or “plant fertilizer” however they, are given trade names which are a play on words with reference to illegal drugs and drug taking, leaving the consumption of the product open to confusion and misinterpretation, with dangerous consequences.

Elizabeth Kirk, Senior Trading Standards Officer said “The increase in the use of so called “Legal Highs” is of great concern to both ourselves and the Police, as these substances are as easily abused as illegal drugs, and unfortunately many users think that because they are legal, they are safe. Although all the samples tested on this occasion only contain drugs that are legal on the open market in the UK, many of them are illegal in other countries around the world.”

Kim Hager, Manager of the Drug and Alcohol Action Team (DAAT) welcomed the initiative and the findings. ‘It is time for these products to accurately detail their contents, as with any other products on sale for consumption, so that purchasers can make informed choices and minimise the risks to themselves with regard to any particular ingredients.’

This sampling formed part of a Home Office initiative designed to build intelligence that will feed into the regulatory review that is taking place into psychoactive substances.